Holy Hour for Reparation, Mercy and Healing for Sins Against Human Life

Saturday June 15, 2013

Celebration of The Gospel of Life during the Year of Faith

Chiesa
di Santo Spirito in Sassia, Rome, Italy

Dear
brothers and sisters in Christ,

At the very first Sunday Angelus of this
pontificate, Pope Francis spoke of the divine mercy: "God's face is the face of
a merciful Father who is always patient," he said. "God never ever tires of
forgiving us! ....The problem is that we ourselves tire, we do not want to ask,
we grow weary of asking for forgiveness. He never tires of forgiving, but at
times we get tired of asking for forgiveness. Let us never tire, let us never
tire! He is the loving Father who always pardons, who has that heart of mercy
for us all" (Angelus, 17 March 2013).

The
Holy Father's description of the divine mercy is very concrete. God is merciful
and patient, waiting for us to approach Him and ask for pardon. This waiting on
His part is tireless, but our approach can be delayed, hesitant, or even
reluctant. We weary of asking but, fortunately for us, God never tires of
waiting.

Now, to
be sure, we can turn to God at any moment of our lives to ask for His pardon
with the assurance that He will hear us. Still, with respect to His mercy, God
has not left the burden solely on us. He has taken the initiative here in a
striking manner to give a sacramental form to His mercy, putting it at our
disposal in a tangible way. This point is of the greatest importance. As the
Holy Father implies, God patiently waits for us in a concrete way in the
Sacrament of Penance, a sacrament that might well and truly be called the
"Sacrament of Divine Mercy." In faith, we can affirm with all seriousness that
He patiently waits for us in the confessional where we can outwardly express
our need for His forgiveness and, what is more, where He can address His words
of mercy directly to us through the priest who speaks in the power of His only
begotten Son.

In the
Sacrament of Penance Christ presents himself sacramentally to us in the person
of the priest confessor who speaks and acts, as the Church declares, in persona Christi. In the Sacrament of
the Holy Eucharist, we find an almost exact parallel to the sacramental
encounter in confession. Here, in this hour of adoration, we expose the
Eucharistic host, not so that Christ can be more present to us, but so we can be more present to him.In the same way, in the Sacrament of Penance,
we kneel before Christ himself, present in his priest,to confess our sins, and it is from Christ
that we receive mercy and pardon. The gift of divine mercy is granted to us in
a sacramental encounter with Christ who, hearing our sins, our sorrow for them,
and our firm purpose of amendment, forgives and fortifies us in his grace.

In what
is itself an act of mercy, accommodated to our human nature, God has given a
sacramental and thus tangible form to the bestowal of His grace and mercy. Not
only can we express our need for divine mercy in private prayer—hoping that it
will be heard—but God has instituted a sacramental form through which to impart
His mercy so that, by a sacred ritual comprised of words and gestures, we may
speak to Him with unqualified assurance and,
very importantly, He can speak to us.

There are thus two sides to the encounter of the Sacrament of
Mercy. As
Blessed John Paul II wrote: "In faithfully observing
the centuries-old practice of the Sacrament of Penance—the practice of
individual confession, with a personal act of sorrow and the intention to amend
and make satisfaction—the Church is…defending the human soul's individual
right: man's right to a more personal encounter with the crucified forgiving
Christ, with Christ saying, through the minister of the sacrament of
Reconciliation: 'Your sins are forgiven'; 'Go, and do not sin again'" (Redemptor Hominis, 20). Not only has the penitent the right to encounter Christ
and receive the divine mercy directly from him. But, Blessed John Paul
continued, "this is also a right on Christ's part with regard to every human
being redeemed by him: his right to meet each one of us in that key moment in
the soul's life constituted by the moment of conversion and forgiveness" (ibid.).

The penitent's right to this personal encounter with Christ
in the Sacrament of Divine Mercy cannot be compromised by reducing the
reception of this sacrament to the occasions of communal penance services twice
a year at Advent and Lent when there is little time for a proper examination of
conscience or for anything more than a hasty confession of a few sins. As
Blessed John Paul wrote: "Although participation by the fraternal community of
the faithful in the penitential celebration is a great help for the act of
personal conversion, nevertheless, in the final analysis, it is necessary that
in this act there should be a pronouncement by the individual himself with the
whole depth of his conscience and with the whole of his sense of guilt and of
trust in God…"(ibid.). The full experience
of the divine mercy in its sacramental form demands a discipline of frequent
and regular confession in which one can reflect with a recollected heart on
one's failings and the need for true conversion. How can one fully relish the
richness of the divine mercy on the run?

We tend to think of this sacrament mostly from our point of view.
But what about God's point of view? In a real sense, as Blessed John Paul
suggests, God "needs" for us to ask. The Sacrament of Divine Mercy is two-sided, a real encounter. Our
experience tells us why this must be so. If someone insults you, or offends you
in some way, you may want to forgive the person in question, but that's very
hard to do if they don't apologize and ask for your forgiveness. The situation
in the Sacrament of Divine Mercy is not so different.

As Pope Francis put it, "God's face is the face of a
merciful Father who is always patient…. The problem is that we ourselves tire,
we do not want to ask, we grow weary of asking for forgiveness." God is
patiently waiting in the confessional to make us a gift of His mercy. We must
not keep Him waiting any longer.

The
Sacrament of Divine Mercy—won for us by Christ in his passion, death and
resurrection—is the concrete expression in space and time of the condescension
and forbearance by which God looks with merciful forgiveness on our sins and the
sins of the whole world.

Today,
in this ancient church of Santo Spirito in Sassia, especially dedicated to the
Divine Mercy, we must resolve to take advantage of this great sacrament of
mercy.

This
resolution is supremely apt in the circumstances of our Holy Hour today as we
focus our attention on our Blessed Savior in adoration, imploring his mercy and
forgiveness for the horrendous sins against human life that have become an
everyday occurrence in our world. These seemingly irreparable harms to life and
to souls, whose weight threatens to crush our spirits,can only be undone by the passion, death and
resurrection of Christ.At the same
time, our determination to carry on the battle for human life from conception
to natural death can only be sustained by our faith and personal experience of
the divine mercy in the Sacrament of Penance. As we acknowledge our own sins
and failings before Christ himself, and receive his absolution at the hands of
his priests, we are filled with hope in the final victory of Christ over the
culture of death and can give thanks "to the Lord for He is good, for His mercy
endures forever." Amen.

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